Lessons Learned From Shooting with a Big @ss Lens

I had the opportunity to rent a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L Series USM Lens with Image Stabilization. This lens retails for $1700 and I rented it for $90 a week.

This lens has image stabilization which is great for daytime shooting on or off a tripod using reasonable shutter speeds.

However, evening shots are a different story. I tried to take a photo of the space shuttle on the launch pad at night using a tripod and a remote switch and couldn't figure out why photos were still coming out blurry.

It turns out that the $50 tripod I have was the culprit.


If you look at the base of where the lens mounts to the tripod, it's sort of a ball joint that is held tight by the screw handle. Even when I have the screw as tight as I possibly could without breaking it, the ball joint still moves with the enormous weight of the lens sitting on top of it.

When does it move you ask? This is the stunning part. The camera is completely still....until the shutter inside the camera flaps open. Once the shutter flaps up, that tiny movement internal to the camera is enough to rattle the entire camera body due to the offset of the weight of the lens sitting on a ball joint that cannot itself hold the weight.

When you have a distant object zoomed in, a slight shift in the camera body is enough to move what the lens sees by ten fold. I'm sure you all know (because we've all looked through telescopes before) it's the same effect as looking through a telescope. Lets say, you have the telescope focused on the moon but then you give it a nudge smaller than a centimeter. It may knock it completely out of your field of view.

In addition to the ball joint moving ever so slightly, the legs of the tripod was just about ready to collapse if I gently pushed down on the camera. This tripod is one of those where the leg is cut into three segments and each segment is held in place by a flap type rotating thingy.

I didn't realize it yesterday when I was shooting but I looked at the specs of the tripod this morning and it can support up to 13lbs. I must have been borderline otherwise, the thing would have collapsed on itself.

Food for thought. :D